In response to my previous post citing Orson Scott Card’s Star Trek critique, Tobias Buckell takes issue with my comment (and Jim Oberg’s concurrence) about Trekkers’ interest in space:

Boy, I’d have to quibble with that. I recall ST folk being excited enough to beg NASA to rename the first shuttle Enterprise. That hardly smacks of ‘not being interested in space activities.’

This little episode, dating back to the late 1970s, actually makes my point, not his. OV-101, the test article for the Approach and Landing Tests (ALT), was originally supposed to be called the Constitution, but the Star Trek fans were mobilized to rename it the Enterprise, despite the fact that it would never actually fly in space. Many (including me) attempted to make them aware of this, but they didn’t seem to care, and pressed on regardless.

It was kind of a drive-by interest, and whether or not the vehicle they were attempting to rename would actually be a space vehicle seemed to be of much less importance to them than that it be named after the Enterprise. If they thought that they could have pulled it off, they’d have probably signed a petition and sent in letters demanding that the astronaut uniforms be bell bottoms with boots, a la STTOS. If Mr. Buckell has any other data to indicate interest by Trekkers in space, or reality, I’d be interested to hear it, because this sure isn’t it.